It is the biggest, most expensive project of its kind in Connecticut history: a $279.4 million, 4.1 mile-long tunnel dug through solid rock 200 feet below the streets of the capital city.
And it’s all about sewage.
Work already has begun on this extraordinary venture, which is intended to stop millions of gallons of polluted storm waters and untreated sewage from being flushed every year into the Connecticut River and down into Long Island Sound.
(Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant) The tunnel, being constructed by the Metropolitan District with taxpayer grants and loans, will be able to capture up to 41.5 million gallons of polluted water and hold it until it can be cleaned at the MDC’s sewage treatment plant.
The MDC’s long-term plan to solve the problem calls for spending $2.4 billion to improve the Hartford area’s sewers and treatment systems, using a combination of state grants and funding from MDC ratepayers.
That huge cost is one reason Connecticut officials and environmental groups have been pushing hard to get the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require Springfield and several other upstream Massachusetts cities to prevent their sewer overflows from contaminating the water that flows down the Connecticut River and into the Sound.
Here, laborers work in the pump station shaft of the project at the Brainard Avenue construction site.
Most of the chipped rock is being excavated from bedrock 150 to 200 feet below street level, and Mike Surman, project manager for the contractors, said the material is almost certain to be contamination-free.
Negrelli said the district’s water ratepayers authorized $800 million in MDC spending for the sewer system projects in 2006 and another $800 million in 2012.
"We have to make sure it does not end up as raw sewage in our waterways … and in Long Island Sound," Charamut added.